A CREDITOR! Good heaven, is there beneath Thy glorious concave of cerulean blue, A being formed so thoroughly for dislike, As is a creditor? No, he's supreme, The devil's a joke to him! Whoe'er has seen An adder's head upraised, with gleaming eyes, About to make a spring, may form a shade Of mild resemblance to a creditor. I do remember once--'tis long agone-- Of stripping to the waist to wade the Tyne-- The English Tyne, dark, sluggish, broad, and deep; And just when middle-way, there caught mine eye, A lamprey of enormous size pursuing me! L---- what a fright! I bobb'd, I splashed, I flew. He had a creditor's keen, ominous look, I never saw an uglier--but a real one. This is implanted in man's very nature, It cannot be denied. And once I deemed it The most degrading stain our nature bore: Wearing a shade of every hateful vice, Ingratitude, injustice, selfishness. But I was wrong, for I have traced the stream Back to its fountain in the inmost cave, And found in postulate of purest grain, It's first beginning.--It is not the man, The friend who has obliged us, we would shun, But the conviction which his presence brings, That we have done him wrong:--a sense of grief And shame at our own rash improvidence: The heart bleeds for it, and we love the man Whom we would shun. The feeling's hard to bear.
A BLUSTERING FELLOW! There's a deadly bore, Placed in a good man's way, who only yearns For happiness and joy. But day by day, This blusterer meets me, and the hope's defaced. I cannot say a word--make one remark, That meets not flat and absolute contradiction-- I nothing know on earth--am misinformed On every circumstance. The very terms, Scope, rate, and merits of my own transactions Are all to me unknown, or falsified, Of which most potent proof can be adduced. Then the important thump upon the board, Snap with the thumb, and the disdainful 'whew!' Sets me and all I say at less than naught. What can a person do?--To knock him down Suggests itself, but then it breeds a row In a friend's house, or haply in your own, Which is much worse; for glasses go like cinders; The wine is spilled--the toddy. The chair-backs Go crash! No, no, there's nothing but forbearance, And mark'd contempt. If that won't bring him down, There's nothing will. Ah! can the leopard change His spots, or the grim Ethiop his hue? Sooner they may and nature change her course, Than can a blusterer to a modest man: He still will stand a beacon of dislike. A fool--I wish all blustering chaps were dead, That's the true bathos to have done with them.